Electronic devices have become indispensable tools for business and personal use. Portable electronic devices, such as “laptop” or “notebook” computers (i.e., portable computers), have become increasingly popular because of their portability, their use as communication terminals providing access to the Internet, and the wide variety of applications that can be operated on them. In the particular case of portable computers, a significant limitation affecting their usefulness is the limited useful life of the batteries that power them. As a consequence, the batteries for these devices must often be recharged. An added limitation is the weight and bulk of portable computers, which often renders them difficult to carry in many instances.
Another limitation of conventional portable electronic devices is the inability to use them to quickly review a limited amount of information, such as to look up a phone number or an address. Conventional portable electronic devices, such as portable computers, are structurally designed with a flat panel display positioned in a lid that is mounted to a chassis by a hinge. The lid on such devices must be opened to view the display. Additionally, before a portable computer can be used to access information, it must be turned on and it then must “boot up” by running an initialization sequence and loading an operating system. This entire process can become burdensome for users since it can require considerable time and is a significant limitation. A further limitation is the necessity to open a portable computer to turn it on and to access information. It can be very difficult to perform both functions in certain instances, such as when driving a car or when sitting in the small confines of an aircraft seat.
An alternative approach for making portable computers more convenient involves including auxiliary components (e.g., displays, control buttons, etc.) that are accessible when a lid of a computer is closed. An example of this type of portable computer is one that includes a small display on an outer surface of the lid. A subset of the pixels in a larger main display on the inner surface of the lid is mapped to the small display, which can be viewed when the lid of the computer is closed. Although such a computer does allow some information to be viewed on the small display when the lid is closed, these small displays often have limited usefulness because of the inherent limitations of conventional lid designs.
Furthermore, conventional design practices avoid placing electronic circuits in the lid which perform functions that are completely unrelated to the operation of the larger main display. Thus, the auxiliary components that are included in the lid are rarely more than simple components with limited functionality supported by electronic circuitry located in the chassis of the portable computer. Another conventional design practice is to minimize the form factor of portable computers, including the overall thickness of a portable computer. To this end, the lids of some smaller conventional portable computers exhibit a tapered profile where the thickness of the lid decreases from the hinged edge attached to the chassis to the opposite edge of the lid to reduce or eliminate unused space in the lid behind the larger main display. Other conventional lid designs exhibiting a relatively constant thickness are designed to accommodate multiple light sources that can be used as a backlight for the larger main display rather than for the accommodation of additional electronic circuits that are unrelated to the operation of the larger main display.
In addition to these design practices, certain technical constraints further limit the extent to which additional electronic circuitry can be added that can provide the functionality required to implement auxiliary components used in the lids of portable computers. Among these constraints are a limited ability to provide a sufficient number of electrical connections through a small moving hinge, and a limited ability to manage effectively the magnitude and extent of electromagnetic interference between the electrical signals generated by the larger main display of a portable computer and the electrical signals used by radio-frequency (“RF”) circuits.
Therefore, there is a need for an alternative approach for packaging the main displays of portable electronic devices that would permit the integration of auxiliary components with these displays to enhance the functionality provided by these types of devices.